Reese
My horoscope this morning said to take risks, to reap the benefits of not playing it safe. I’m not usually a risk-taker. My
idea of taking risks is watching horror movies, riding roller coasters and things like that, things that scare the shit out
of you but are safe, that can’t really hurt you.
This can, I think, as I disappear into the trees, getting swallowed up by them. Outside, the night air is cooler than I thought. I
shiver from the cold, trying to forget about things like being cold and about being scared to death of the dark, though the
darkness is so close I can feel it, like some concrete thing. It’s not just an absence of light. It’s not something intangible
like love or hope or dreams. It’s real. I feel it against my skin as I walk, touching me. I try not to think about how scared
I am. I try to think of Daniel instead, of him at the beach, waiting for me on the pier, like he said. I picture his face.
I imagine him alone, searching the dark horizon with his eyes. I fantasize about the moment I step out of the darkness and
we see each other again. In my illusion, I say something witty and brilliant. He laughs, coming to me.
For a while, thinking about him makes me forget about being scared. But then I hear a sound from behind—the snap of a tree branch and the soft crunch of leaves like from beneath someone’s feet—and I freeze, momentarily paralyzed, thinking this is how I die. Out here, alone, late at night.
No one knows where I am.
No one would even know I was missing until the morning, when Emily and Nolan woke up and found my bed empty. By then, I’d
definitely be dead.
I picture that: Emily finding my bed empty and being mad first, before she finds out I’m dead.
Everyone was asleep when I left. I waited for Emily to go upstairs last as if she was putting off going to bed with Nolan,
who went out of his way all night to ignore her. Even when he did say something, it was mean. He went to bed first, closing
the bedroom door. I wasn’t sure she was ever going to go. I waited a long time, and then, after she did, I waited even longer
for her to fall asleep. I carried my shoes out so no one would hear me go, wrapping my hand around the doorknob, turning it
a little at a time so as not to make a sound. When it was open, I grabbed the knob by the other side so that the latch stayed
put, not letting go until the door was closed and even when I did, it was slow as fuck, the latch crawling back into place.
From downstairs, I could hear Nolan, snoring like he does, which is why Emily wears earplugs when she sleeps. Nolan sleeps
like the dead, so much so that he’s always sleeping through his alarm.
I left the front door unlocked because I don’t have a key, which means that anyone can get in while I’m gone, if they wanted
to.
Now I wheel around at the noise. I narrow my eyes, searching the woods, my heart pounding in my chest. I try to see through the darkness, imagining someone coming out of the trees and killing me horror movie style, with a chain saw or an ice pick.
I can almost hear the music playing in the background, something super minimalist but creepy as fuck.
In horror movies, it’s always the dumb, slutty cheerleader who dies first, and I wonder if that’s me, if I’m that trope: the stupid blonde, sneaking out late at night to walk through the woods alone to meet up with a complete stranger.
If something were to happen to me, would people say it was my fault? That I had it coming to me? That I deserved to die?
“Hello,” I whisper out into the darkness, my voice soft, shrinking. I feel cold and I’m shaky all over. My legs are weak and
there’s a steady pulse in my neck, a thump thump, thump thump. “Is someone there?” I ask.
Thump thump.
No one says. But then the sound comes again, even closer this time, and I retreat slowly from it, too afraid to turn my back
to whatever it is, to turn around and run. The face of the man from the pool—the Hey. Can you bring me something to eat too?—flashes into my mind, as does the face of the man at the lodge the other day, the one who checked out Mae, his eyes moving
from her overalls, down her bony little legs to her shoes.
I should run to our own cottage, where it’s safe. I start to, backing further away. But before I can go, a dark shape steps
in front of me and I gasp. It’s too late for me now. There’s no time to run before he smashes a damp, sweaty hand down over
my mouth, and my heart goes wild. I try to pull away, to jerk free from under his grip.
“There’s no point fighting,” he says as the moonlight shines down on him and lights up his face so that, for the first time,
I see who it is. I go still. Stiff. My breaths become shallow, my whole body overcome with panic and fear.
He comes even closer. I yank back, slamming into a tree, trapped. His face is straight, his stare piercing and cold as he
looks down on me and says, “You should’ve known better than to trust a guy like me. Did you really not think I might try to
hurt you?”